Do you believe in ghosts?

According to a poll by the Huffington Post, 45 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, or that at least in certain situations, dead people can come back as spirits.

With Halloween having just passed, many of us will be interested in the various spooky attractions around us. New Mexico especially has its fair share of hauntings. These are five of the spookiest places in New Mexico.

5) Who, us?

The first on this list is our very own Santa Fe High, where, legend has it, a ghost roams the halls of the Science Building. The story goes that in 1992, a French teacher named Ruth Norris was diagnosed with cancer and died during the school year. Her students painted a mural for her, but it was torn down when some work was done on the school.

It is said that her spirit is angry because the mural was destroyed. Physics teacher Ms. Nugent says that when she stays late at school, she hears doors closing, toilets flushing, and occasionally footsteps. “When you’re here alone late at night, you hear what sounds like footsteps down the hall. If I’m down [in my classroom] I’ll hear them upstairs, and if I’m upstairs, I’ll hear them downstairs,” she said, adding, “If anyone were to haunt this school, it would be her.”

4) Hotel Parq Central

In 1926, the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company built a hospital in Albuquerque for medical emergencies around the railroad. In the 1970’s, it was turned into a psychiatric hospital for children and teenagers.

But after the hospital changed hands, weird things began to happen. Patients would wake to find themselves covered in strange scratches, with sheets pulled off of them and voices whispering.

The building was then refurbished and turned into the high-end Hotel Parq Central, which opened in 2010. But guests still report paranormal things happening, such as sheets being pulled off their beds. Some visitors even claim to have seen apparitions.

3) Urraca Mesa

Just outside Angel Fire, the Urraca Mesa stands tall. The “Ancient Ones,” thought to be ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians (they used to be called “Anasazi”) originally inhabited the Urraca Mesa, but there is evidence that the entire tribe mysteriously vanished. It appears that the tribe was wiped out, with many of the skeletons found showing signs of torture, but no culprit was ever found.

The name “Urraca” means magpie in that ancient language, and many legends show the magpie to be a bad omen. The Ancient Ones believed that on top of the mesa, there was a portal to the fifth dimension, otherwise known as Hell. Legend has it that they fought a long battle and finally managed to close the portal, though at the cost of many lives. In the end, everyone in the tribe other than the oldest and most powerful shaman had lost their lives.

The shaman purportedly managed to close the portal by sealing it away with six cat totems. The cats were supposed to scare the magpies away, and as long as at least one of them remained, the portal could not be opened. It is said that if all of the cat figurines should fall, the portal would open and the horrors of the apocalypse would be released upon the world. Reports say that only two cats are left standing.

2) Andrew Smith Gallery (Grant’s Corner Inn)

The building that houses the Andrew Smith Gallery was originally built in 1905 by a young couple that had recently moved to Santa Fe. A short while after they settled down, their son was born, a sickly child who needed to be watched over. The husband died a little while later.

As the child’s health continued to worsen, the young woman remarried and spent most of her time caring for the child. People who visited the house could hear the young boy crying and banging on the walls. A few years later, the child was said to have come too close to the stairs and fell to the landing below. He died from his injuries, and the woman and her new husband moved away.

Before it was the Andrew Smith Gallery, it was first converted into an inn, named Grant Corner Inn, where people would report hearing noises coming from the boy’s room, as well as slamming doors. These sounds reportedly persist today.

1) KiMo Theatre, Albuquerque

The KiMo opened in 1927, when silent movies were a big part of the culture. In 1951, however, a six-year-old boy was killed when a boiler in the basement exploded. The boy, Bobby Darnell, was frightened by something on screen and ran to the lobby. He was almost directly on top of the boiler when it exploded, killing him and destroying part of the lobby.

Bobby is said to play pranks and practical jokes on people, especially the cast. He will trip and bother people while they are performing, and the only way to appease him is to hang doughnuts on a water pipe that runs behind the stage.

One night, the director of a play who had not heard about the ghost roaming the stage ordered the doughnuts removed. One of the people working that night recalled, “About ten or fifteen minutes into the show, weird things started going wrong. People were forgetting their lines, people were tripping and falling on stage, odd pieces of equipment would fall from the ceiling, light bulbs exploded.”

Those were five of the most haunted places in New Mexico, and remember kids, stay spoopy!